The perspective that informs this important book is that every evaluation of a capacity development effort should itself contribute to the capacity development effort and ultimately to the organization’s performance. This is a revolutionary idea in evaluation. With the idea have come the questions: Can it be done? And, if it is done, what will be the consequences? This book elucidates and deepens the idea, shows it can be done, and examines the consequences, both intended and unintended, of engaging in capacity development evaluation

The Second Edition of Building Evaluation Capacity provides 89 highly structured activities which require minimal instructor preparation and encourage application-based learning of how to design and conduct evaluation studies. Ideal for use in program evaluation courses, professional development workshops, and organization stakeholder trainings, authors Hallie Preskill and Darlene Russ-Eft cover the entire process of evaluation, including: understanding what evaluation is; the politics and ethics; the influence of culture; various models, approaches and designs; data collection and analysis methods; communicating and reporting progress and findings; and building and sustaining support. Each activity includes an overview, instructional objectives, minimum and maximum number of participants, range of time required, materials needed, primary instructional method, and procedures for facilitators to help learners in the most common evaluation practices.

Institutional Assessment: A framework for strengthening organizational capacity for IDRCs research partners

This manual explains the skills and steps for making a monitoring and evaluation system that functions well, organizing the people, processes and partnershipsso that they collect and use good information that can be used by decision makers and other stakeholders.

Evaluating Communication for Development presents a comprehensive framework for evaluating communication for development (C4D). This framework combines the latest thinking from a number of fields in new ways. It critiques dominant instrumental, accountability-based approaches to development and evaluation and offers an alternative holistic, participatory, mixed methods approach based on systems and complexity thinking and other key concepts. It maintains a focus on power, gender and other differences and social norms. The authors have designed the framework as a way to focus on achieving sustainable social change and to continually improve and develop C4D initiatives. The benefits and rigour of this approach are supported by examples and case studies from a number of action research and evaluation capacity development projects undertaken by the authors over the past fifteen years. Building on current arguments within the fields of C4D and development, the authors reinforce the case for effective communication being a central and vital component of participatory forms of development, something that needs to be appreciated by decision makers. They also consider ways of increasing the effectiveness of evaluation capacity development from grassroots to management level in the development context, an issue of growing importance to improving the quality, effectiveness and utilisation of monitoring and evaluation studies in this field. The book includes a critical review of the key approaches, methodologies and methods that are considered effective for planning evaluation, assessing the outcomes of C4D, and engaging in continuous learning. This rigorous book is of immense theoretical and practical value to students, scholars, and professionals researching or working in development, communication and media, applied anthropology, and evaluation and program planning.

Each year, organizations spend millions of dollars trying out new innovations and improvements-and millions will be wasted if they can't quickly find out what's working and what is not. The Success Case Method offers a breakthrough evaluation technique that is easier, faster, and cheaper than competing approaches, and produces compelling evidence decision-makers can actually use. Because it seeks out the best stories of how real individuals have actually used innovations, The Success Case Method can ferret out success no matter how small or infrequent. It can salvage the few ''gems'' of success from a larger initiative that is not doing well or find out how to make a partially successful effort even more successful. The practical methods and tools in this book can help those who initiate and foster change, including leaders, executives, managers, consultants, training directors, and anyone else who is trying to make things work better in organizations get the greatest returns for their investments.

This Second Edition celebrates 21 years of the practice of empowerment evaluation, a term first coined by David Fetterman during his presidential address for the American Evaluation Association. Since that time, this approach has altered the landscape of evaluation and has spread to a wide range of settings in more than 16 countries. In this Second Edition of Empowerment Evaluation: Knowledge and Tools for Self-Assessment, Evaluation Capacity Building, and Accountability, an outstanding group of evaluators from academia, government, nonprofits, and foundations assess how empowerment evaluation has been used in practice since the publication of the landmark 1996 edition. The book includes 10 empowerment evaluation principles, a number of models and tools to help put empowerment evaluation into practice, reflections on the history and future of the approach, and illustrative case studies from a number of different projects in a variety of diverse settings. The Second Edition offers readers the most current insights into the practice of this stakeholder-involvement approach to evaluation. “One of the greatest evaluation innovations of the past two decades has been the development of a professional and systematic approach to self-evaluation called empowerment evaluation. This book offers you the latest, cutting-edge understanding of this powerful innovation and evaluation approach. May you be inspired and empowered as you adventure through the chapters in this outstanding volume!” —Stewart I. Donaldson, President-elect, American Evaluation Association, Claremont Graduate University “This twenty year follow-up to the original provides even better and richer stories about the versatility and utility of empowerment work in most social contexts. It expands our understanding of how empowerment evaluation is foundational to any effort to improve and measure growth in any community/social environment.” —Robert Schumer, University of Minnesota “This text brings empowerment evaluation to life, and in doing so it offers all evaluators a large body of relevant concepts and tools for designing, implementing, and assessing evaluation efforts that engage, democratize, and strengthen stakeholder’s self-determination.” —Gary J. Skolits, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville